Ljubljana: Best and Brightest

Ljubljana is a little marvel of a city. Just 300,000 residents, but a national capital; part of the Austrian Empire back in the day, and more recently part of Yugoslavia, but emerging from those chapters of its history without the deep scars of many of its Balkan neighbors; it’s got what felt, at least to a weeklong visitor, like a perfect balance of small-town friendliness and familiarity and big-city culture. After the jump: Slovenia!

My Instagram followers were plagued by about 20 photos that all looked basically like this. It's pretty, is my point.

I spent my week in Ljubljana holed up in a micro-apartment (the kind of “shower in the toilet” setup you’ll find in a few corners of Europe) at the edge of the largely-pedestrian Old Town core. It’s an idyllic place, with a lazy river running through it and a castle on a bluff overlooking the city. As a tour guide put it, the Old Town is something of the city’s downtown, someplace that locals tend to go out for a good time but somewhere that few Slovenians live full-time. Still, there’s a good mix of tourists and locals and you never have the sense you get in smaller places like Kotor or Mostar of a Disneyland-esque fabrication.

There was a street art festival right after I left, but the City Hall had already put up an exhibition on street art that was open to the public! COME ON GUYS THAT'S SO GREAt.

There were dozens of ways that Ljubljana charmed me. Its bike loan system is actually nicer than Vienna’s in the smaller details – lighter bikes, a quicker interface to unlock them – and while there aren’t as many marked lanes, the cycling culture is just about as pronounced and friendly. There’s a bit of touristy pricing, but it’s really easy to find your way around it; you can spend €8 on breakfast alongside the Ljubljanica river, or you can walk a few storefronts down and pick up a coffee for €1.50 that comes with free bread and housemade jams. There is, as I found in Lake Bled as well, a nice emphasis on Slovenian-made products; I’m sure there are many Made-in-China exceptions, but a lot of shops and produce stands were proudly local, whether selling souvenir trinkets or strawberries.

An artificial "rain" installation in the square leading to the city's famous triple bridge (Tromostovje), one of approximately ten thousand pieces of the city designed by Jože Plečnik

And speaking of food, the food tour/experience company Ljubljananjam is superb. My parents had given me a little cash for my birthday with the caveat that I was to use it for something fun on this trip that I wouldn’t have done otherwise (they are great and know that I can sometimes cheapskate myself out of things), and so I spent an afternoon with Iva, the company’s founder, and a couple from Indiana embarking on a longer bike tour through Slovenia, Italy, and Austria. It was a great experience – we sampled dishes from probably a half-dozen different restaurants, picked up some snacks from the local market, and learned a lot about not just traditional Slovenian cuisine, but the current culture – food and otherwise. (We also learned that there is a 24-hour vending machine to dispense raw milk in bulk quantities, Slovenes love their dairy and they are correct in doing so.) It was social, it was informative, it was tasty – it was, in short, a great afternoon introduction to the city. And, consequently, I desperately want to find a long-term supply of pumpkin seed oil (a local product that is superb).

Our final stop: an awesome little "time cafe," where you pick up a clock on your way in, and are charged on your way out based on how long you stayed. There's an espresso machine, teas, drinks, a piano, books, just a ton of things you can use to make an afternoon pass, and frequent events. Not to be too hyperbolic, but I think this was: VERY GOOD?

And speaking of culture… I arrived just at the outset of the Ljubljana Festival, their big summer fest featuring concerts and performances for weeks on end. Being there the first night meant getting to see a performance of Carmina Burana in Congress Square – for free, perching just outside the gates marking the entrance to the ticketholders’ area. Iva ran into me while I was reading a book waiting for the performance, and said “This is what I love about this city, is there’s this big performance and it’ll be sold out, but you can also see it for free sitting right here.” Same here. The city really has a nice lack of pretension while producing a huge amount of culture for its size, and while it has a national symphony that can rock out a solid Orff concert, if you have breakfast outside you’ll spend most of your morning seeing people run into their friends on the street and chat away like it’s Small Town USA (Slovenia).

There's dragons on the Dragon Bridge, of course, but I prefer these cute li'l babydragons, midway down. In the far blurry distance you can see the hill the castle is on! It's an okay castle, but it's not as good as b a b y d r a g o n s

After the week, I embarked to Lake Bled for a weekend before making my way (slowly) to Berlin. More on that in the coming days. Til then, stay lovely, you delightful li’l capital.

AND HOW, shop window display, and how.